Development of isotope dilution cold vapor inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and its application to the certification of Mercury in NIST standard reference materials

An isotope dilution cold vapor inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ID-CV-ICPMS) method featuring gaseous introduction of mercury via tin chloride reduction has been developed and applied to the quantification and certification of mercury in various NIST standard reference materials:  SRM 966 Toxic Metals in Bovine Blood (30 ng·mL-1); SRM 1641d Mercury in Water (1.6 μg·mL-1); and SRM 1946 Lake Superior Fish Tissue (436 ng·g-1). Complementary mercury data were generated for SRMs and NIST quality control standards using cold vapor atomic absorption spectroscopy (CVAAS). Certification results for the determination of mercury in SRM 1641d using two independent methods (ID-CV-ICPMS and CVAAS) showed a degree of agreement of 0.3% between the methods. Gaseous introduction of mercury into the ICPMS resulted in a single isotope sensitivity of 2 × 106 counts·s-1/ng·g-1 for 201Hg and significantly reduced the memory and washout effects traditionally encountered in solution nebulization ICPMS. Figures of mer...